No-trade clauses and no-movement clauses are commonplace within the NHL, but the Rangers must be the first team in the league to grant non-compete clauses to their players.

Truly, for all of the blunders and all of the difficulties the team has had adapting to a new system through a cockamamy training camp schedule and a brutal opening week out west, the Blueshirts’ failure to compete is by far the most disturbing aspect of the hobbled 2-5 getaway.

Listen to this: in 420 minutes of hockey, the Rangers have trailed by three goals or more for 145:42. They have trailed by at least three goals for the entire third periods at San Jose, Anaheim and New Jersey. When behind by three, they have been outscored 9-1.

Once behind, they turn into a collective Walter White, hands clasped behind their heads, surrendering in the desert to Hank Schrader.

Saturday’s 4-0 defeat to the Devils was the most unsettling game of a season already littered with discouraging displays, even if the Rangers did present a largely depleted frontline in the absence of Rick Nash, Ryan Callahan and Carl Hagelin.

The previously winless (0-4-3) Devils were desperate. The Rangers were spectators. The Devils were hungry. The Rangers appeared sated following their 2-0 defeat of the struggling Capitals in Washington on Wednesday. They were outworked from beginning to end, the limited number of chances against cited by coach Alain Vigneault merely a stat that could not camouflage an inferior work ethic.

Do these adults really need someone getting in their faces and screaming in their ears 24/7 to motivate them to compete? Do they only respond to the stick?

Henrik Lundqvist, enduring the worst stretch of his NHL career, gave up a couple of bad goals within the opening 12:37 in New Jersey and the game was over, the rest of it merely extended garbage time.

No one knows whether the breakdown in contract negotiations between management and the goaltender has had an impact on Lundqvist’s inferior start. The Rangers have been foolish in grinding their franchise player and allowing this dispute to fester into the season.

But that is sure no excuse for Lundqvist, who, after all, is being paid $5.125 million this season on the final season of a six-year deal worth an average of $6.875 million per season. Maybe the contract extension, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with it, but Lundqvist hasn’t looked like himself since camp opened.

The Rangers are built on the proposition they will receive elite goaltending night after night after night, the way they have year after year after year since Lundqvist arrived from Sweden nine seasons ago. Without that, they are nothing.

The loss of Nash has been debilitating. The Rangers remade their team two summers ago in order to acquire the power winger from Columbus and have nothing at all to show for it absent Big No. 61. The Blueshirts were 0-3-1 last season when he was out with a concussion; they are effectively 1-4 since their most important skater was concussed anew by a Brad Stuart head shot in the first period in San Jose on Oct. 8.

Questions about Nash’s future health hang uncomfortably over the franchise. What if this becomes chronic? What if Nash becomes, say, Keith Primeau? What then?

But more immediately, what now? Nash is down for an indefinite period of time. Callahan, the essence of a Black-and-Blueshirt mentality that is merely a memory, is down for a month. Hagelin, an engine, is out for at least three more games.

First-pair defenseman Dan Girardi is off to a nightmarish start. A Norris candidate two years ago, his 39.6 percent Corsi rating (five-on-five attempts for versus attempts against) ranks 512th among 535 players who have played at least five games.

Derek Stepan has made no impact. Derick Brassard looks like the perennial disappointment he was in Columbus rather than the ascending talent he was upon his acquisition at last year’s deadline.

Injuries. Contract negotiations. Brutal travel. Mutual unfamiliarity with the coach. All excuses for the Rangers, who are taking every one of them.

There is, however, no excuse for an inferior work ethic. No excuse at all for these players who, given half the chance, seem to be invoking their non-compete clauses.